Editing Guidelines
As a foreword we want to state that we appreciate all contributions to the wiki regardless of their level of quality with the exceptions of spoilers, copyright violations and direct copy / pasting from other websites. So if you want to help build the wiki we would love to have you aboard regardless of the other guidelines on this page. They're mostly here to function as an orientation for the community as a whole anyway and your contributions are valuable because of the collaborative nature of wiki building in which we constantly build upon each other's edits. So don't feel too concerned about the information presented below if you're new; you could even skip it and jump into editing right now if you want. With that being said, here are the current guidelines for the wiki. Please feel free to post your suggestions about them on their talk page at any time. General *The format for page titles and URLs is "Name (Game)." Example: Riverwood (Skyrim). *The text displayed for links excludes the game name however. So Riverwood's link text in Skyrim is just "Riverwood". *Article pages such as quests and in-game locations usually have the following headings in this order: Bug statistics, Major Bugs, Related Places (if applicable), Quests (if applicable), Minor Bugs, Notes, and Fixed. See our sample page if you want to learn more about the contents of these sections. *Navigational pages such as Skyrim and Whiterun Hold usually do not use the above page sections unless the navigational page is for a specific area that has its own bugs, such as Blackreach. *Bugs are generally listed in order from the most severe and/or far-reaching to the least severe and/or far-reaching with purely aesthetic bugs bringing up the rear. See Krii Lun Aus as a good example of this. Information order within each bug Lengthier additional information for a specific bug should be listed underneath of the bug with cross-platform universal information first and then information for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in that order. Information within each platform should follow a specific order as well: #General information #Potential prevention methods #Potential workarounds #Incomplete fixes from official patches #Successful fixes from unofficial patches If a platform has multiple potential prevention methods or workarounds for a bug they should be ordered from the most accessible to the least accessible. Blackreach's hut collision bug and the other parts of that page are good examples of how these guidelines look in practice. Guidelines related to spoilers Contributors should take every precaution to avoid writing spoilers since this is a spoiler-averse wiki. This means that dragon shouts, quests, locations and link text among everything else must be handled with extra care. Dragon shouts should always be referred to by their dragon-language names for example and anything else that could reasonably be considered a spoiler must be renamed or described vaguely while still managing to communicate the main idea. Generally the only new things that a user of the wiki should be able to learn regarding an in-game element that were not already obvious or readily apparent should be bugs, patches, prevention methods and workarounds, unless the user chooses to learn more and does not feel compelled to do so in order to understand the previously mentioned information regarding an in-game element's bugs. The Blackreach page has a few good examples of what this looks like in practice. One of the links under its Places section uses text that is slightly different from the page it links to in order to avoid a spoiler. Similarly a minor bug links to a particular exit it discusses using the text "one of the exits" instead of using the exit's name since some users may not want to know the entrance locations to Blackreach until discovering that area themselves. The Notes section links to two dragon shouts via their dragon-language names and does likewise for a spell from Dawnguard using the text "a spell from Dawnguard" too. Overall a good rule of thumb for contributors to follow is "if you're not sure if it's a spoiler, treat it like a spoiler anyway." The worst that could happen is that it actually isn't a spoiler and gets edited later to show as much. Copyright and attribution Any page that uses borrowed or paraphrased content from other sources needs to contain the appropriate attribution. Different sources have different preferences and requirements for this attribution; UESP's guidelines for example can be found in their article UESPWiki:Copyright and Ownership. Our adherence to these guidelines can be found at the end of many of our articles; Riverwood for example uses the text "this page uses material from the UESP article Skyrim:Riverwood and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License." If you would like to create a new page using information from UESP Wiki you can copy and paste the below code at the end of the page in the source part of the editor and adjust the links and their display text accordingly: : This page uses material from the UESP article Skyrim:Riverwood and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Contributors likewise should always do their best to paraphrase, summarize and provide attribution for any information they use from sources outside of TES Bugs Wiki. Copying and pasting text from such sources should be avoided unless 1) it is absolutely necessary, 2) it is made absolutely clear that the text is a direct quote, and 3) proper attribution is given for the quoted text instead of only being given for the page as a whole. We have a policy of never uploading copyrighted content without receiving the copyright holder's permission as well.